Lip vibrated aerophonic musical instruments such as trombones and trumpets commonly accumulate, upon playing, liquid saliva within their hollow bores. Upon continuous prolonged playing, such saliva may undesirably accumulate at a low point within the bore of the instrument, typically at the bend of a trombone's slide or at the bend of a trumpet's tuning slide. Upon excess accumulations of saliva, the fluid may begin to interrupt and interfere with the clear sound and tone of the instrument. In order to compensate for such undesirable saliva accumulation, an outlet port opening the bore of the instrument at such low point fluid accumulation area is commonly provided. In order to preserve air pressure within the bore and to provide for sound reflection at such port, a valve commonly denominated as a “water key”, is commonly installed upon the instrument at the outlet port. Such water key commonly comprises a toggle arm having a circular disk and a sealing pad at its port covering end, and an actuator arm at the other end, the toggle arm being pivotally mounted upon the instrument and being spring biased for normally covering the outlet port.
Such commonly known water key actuated saliva outlet assemblies impose multiple drawbacks and deficiencies. For example, in use of such commonly known assemblies, a musician may first become aware or may first determine that excess saliva has accumulated by audibly perceiving an interruption or degradation in the playing quality or tone of his or her instrument. Reliance upon such accumulation detection method undesirably causes the musician to repeatedly experience incidents of degraded playing quality. As another example, such commonly configured water key assemblies make it difficult for the musician to continue playing the instrument while purging saliva since actuation of the assembly occupies one of the musician's hands to operate the water key, and since the water key, upon opening, releases bore air pressure and interrupts sound reflection at the outlet port.
The instant inventive assembly for purging liquid from a lip vibrated aerophonic musical instrument solves or ameliorates the drawbacks and deficiencies discussed above by providing an attached housing structure having inlet and outlet ends, and by incorporating therein, liquid transmissive media and other structures for continuous fluid purging while continuously preserving bore air pressure and sound reflection.